February 27, 2009

Before his Oscar winning La Maison en Petits Cubes (House of Small Cubes), director Kato Kunio was respected among cult anime circles for his collection of animated shorts titled Diary of Tortov Roddle.Theyare stylistically very similar and there is no denying the immersive beauty of Tortov Roddle. Its art has that soft and grainy texture of a pencil sketch, rendered with great composition and sensitivity to colour. Animation is kept to a minimum while the score is very subdued and appropriate to its whimsical atmosphere.

Diary of Tortov Roddle

In my opinion however, such aesthetics are better suited to complement a good story rather than acting as a driving force (as opposed to 1001 nights for example). So while I was thoroughly captivated watching Tortov visit wonderful places, meeting strange people and doing amusing activities, I felt there was something missing behind that fictitious landscape. Diary of Tortov is an exercise of ‘what if’ without ever getting around to ‘what then’. Like Tortov, we are always the observer, watching the charmingly bizarre castle built on top of a gigantic frog without ever visitng it, or handing a flower to a mysterious woman without ever knowing her. Lot of our fascination is derived from the bizarre first impressions we get (thanks to Kunio’s imagination rendered by the aforementioned aesthetics) and speculations as to what may lie beyond it but very little more. That’s where La Maison en Petits Cubes for me, becomes more compelling than Diary of Tortov Roddle.